If to be feelingly alive to the sufferings of my fellow-creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.
William Wilberforce was Britain’s most important anti-slavery activist.
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.
Confucius (the latinization of the Chinese 孔夫子, Kong Fu Zi or K’ung-fu-tzu, literally “Master Kong,” but usually referred to in China with a simpler version of this honorific as 孔子, Kongzi), The Analects XV:23.
There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883).
When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [The General Idea of the Revolution] (1851).
Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins
qu’il n’ait tué en grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), pen name Voltaire, “Rights” (1771).